Weather and Traffic

Weekend cold front: How low will temps go?

October looks unseasonably warm on the East Coast. (Credit: NOAA/ CPC)

South Florida is buzzing about the weekend’s anticipated cold front, which is expected to blow through on Saturday night, lowering humidity levels not seen since May. But it looks like it will back to business as usual with summer-like weather returning by Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service in Miami.

And the agency’s Climate Prediction Center released its new October forecast Wednesday showing above normal temperatures not only in Florida, but up and down the U.S. East Coast. The West Coast is expected to be unusually warm as well, with a pocket of chilly below average temperatures in the Upper Midwest.

On top of that, rainfall is projected to be above average in South Florida through week two of October, after a stretch of seasonal precipitation levels next week.

Saturday nght/ Sunday morning’s forecast low in Palm Beach is 70, with highs Sunday and Monday in the low 80s under partly cloudy skies. Lows will be in the upper 60s in Wellington, Okeechobee’s forecast low Sunday night is 63, with 60 in Sebring, 61 in Tampa — and all the way down to 50 degrees in Gainesville on Sunday morning.

Jacksonville is looking for 57 degrees; with a downright chilly 46 expected in Tallahassee.

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TROPICAL UPDATE: With only two named storms in September, and five for the season, this could be the quietest year in the Atlantic since 1986, according to Jeff Masters at Weather Underground. September has averaged 4.3 named systems since 1995, he noted.

In their October-November forecast issued Tuesday, Colorado State University hurricane researchers Philip Klotzbach and William Gray called for below average activity through the end of the season, thanks again to high wind shear and “relatively cool” water temperatures in the Caribbean.

On average — based on the years 1966 to 2009 — three named storms form in the Atlantic. So, if just one or two form, that would give us six or seven for the season. Seven would match the 1994 total; six would match the 1986 total.

Two disturbances being tracked by the National Hurricane Center this week, designated 97L and 98L, are in the North Atlantic and have close to a zero percent chance of development, forecasters said.